Walking down the street near my house...

A Korean woman flags me down. As she approaches she says:

Mama, [something in Korean] apartment open. [Something in Korean] 2,000.

I politely declined and thought: I like her gusto! And the fact that she called me "mama."

From my Studio to yours!

from Field Note Installation, One (2013)

Yep, I've got lots of new work to share with you!

I am nearing completion on one of the projects from my time in Kenya. It's working title is Facing Inside Surfaces, consists of a video installation and a photo/sound installation (photo above is part of that), and is an investigation of space and privacy in the central province of Kenyan via the omnipresent gate. 

I'm starting to set up studio visits via Skype (Skype name: nicolerademacher.com). Please let me know if you are interested. I would love to show you what I have been up to.

Additionally, I want to see what other artists have been getting into. In the next couple weeks I will be physically visiting studios of local L.A. artists as well as doing studio visits via Skype. I'll be sure to keep you abreast on all the info!

Thanks for your continued support.

Research and documentation for this project made possible by the North Carolina Arts Council, USA and many private donars/patrons.

Yes, it is updated!

Have you visited my site recently? I know, I have been silent for a bit - but I've been busy!

As you should know by now, my website is in constant reconstruction. This time I have reformatted the layout and made it more "user-friendly" for you. Have a look! You'll get a sneak-peek to some of the work from the Kenya residency.

More news to come - with the recent move to L.A., things are getting exciting!! (I hear that people in L.A. over-use the "!", is this founded? If so, I may have found my crowd - ha!)

Thanks for your support ... warm wishes to you all.

¡ TEASER Inti-Illimani TEASER !

Above is a short teaser for the new music video of Inti-Illimani. They've got a hot new song, La Siembra, that they wrote together with Chilean musician Nano Stern that talks about society and fighting to keep the truth alive.

This Saturday they are filming the music video, directed by Matías Muñoz R., to be premiered next month!!

I've been asked to do the Making-Of, which I am rather excited about, especially because it is small way for me to thank them for being so generous with their talents earlier this year.

Being invisible in the pitch-black

In the small mud-floored kitchen, around the kitchen fire bordered by 3 large stones (to put the pots on), the middle son is home with his 8 year-old for a visit. The three adults discuss life, the city, work - or lack-thereof. The 2 grandsons that live on the homestead are seated there as well, with their cousin, quietly listening to the adult conversation. One of the boys sings, but it is barely heard; the others dig their feet into the ground and fidget. But I can only imagine this based on the conversation in a language that I don't understand that comes billowing out of the barely open door and the small square window. The conversation is accompanied by the suffocating smoke from the kitchen fire, fighting for a place to escape from the confines of the small space.

I steal understandings of bits of words and, of course, proper names like the capital city where the son now lives, with his wife and son in the second largest urban slum on the continent, barely making ends-meet. I stand just a few meters from the wood building, looking up through the rainclouds of the Long Rains season through the pitch-black to a few constellations, barely visible. I look back at the square-shaped room with an orange burning light shining through not only the cracked door and window, but also the open slats that let the rain in this morning while we watched the water heating for our baths.

The conversation is familiar, one that I have had with my own parents in their kitchen during one of my countless visits home. There is a relay back and forth of question-answer, then intermittently the son explains further or the mother continues on a monologue asking and comparing, hoping to glean a bit more about her son's life that is not so unfamiliar to her, she is from a city near by, not the capital, but she is no stranger to the hustle and bustle, but perhaps she has forgotten all of that. Perhaps the forty-some years that she has spent in the high rolling hills tending to their farm and dairy cows, perhaps this less-busy life has allowed her to forget the hand-to-mouth that she, presumably, once lived.

The oldest of the grandsons pops out and I quickly change my gaze back to the sky again, attempting to make myself invisible. Though the night is so dark with no moonlight and no artificial light for miles, at least to the closest town, being invisible isn't so difficult. Then I remember the conversation I had with the shopkeeper today when we made the hike to town for supplies that cannot be reaped from their land, power had been out in the town for the last 2 days - no mobile charging, no television, only the police station, with their noisy generator, could be seen with their lights on at night. The grandson dumps some water and with a clang grabs something from under the chicken coop and glides back into the warm kitchen shutting the door just a few centimeters more behind him.

How long is ten years?

'So he is your husband?' I ask. She nods yes.

'How many years have you been married?' I carefully choose my words; her English is quite limited (please note that my Swahili still only consists of pleasantries and my Kikuyu only happens by accident), and if I have learned nothing else from teaching English and living abroad for so long, I have definitely learned how to grade my language and construct sentences so that communication happens and less ???s occur.

'10 years', she responds.

*Anne is a slight woman, and, to be honest, when I met her the day prior I thought she was an older grandson in the family. I had failed to notice that she was wearing a long skirt below her billowing boy-sweater. Given the short hair, and the fact that in this small village at a very high altitude everyone wears winter caps, a skirt can often be the only way of telling the sex of children ... and very slight women.

Ten years seemed like a lot to me. I've realized that Kenyans can be very deceiving with their age (I mentioned this in my first post from Kenya). She also told me that she is 28, her oldest of two children is 9, and that she is from a small town very far away so she never sees her family. Ten years still seems like a long time to me.

The milk is at a rolling boil, and she adds the tea and stirs.

'Yes, 10 years,' she repeats and laughs. She seems to be a generally happy person, and around me almost everything that I do or say deserves a laugh. Sometimes even her own response deserves a laugh.

She pulls the pot off the fire using only bits of cardboard as oven mitts to protect her not-so-delicate fingers. She sets the pot on the mud floor and places a new pot on the fire and fills it with fresh water that she had fetched from the well in the morning. The family is lucky to have the well on their homestead. I've seen many women and girls carrying large 10 gallon jugs (at least I think it is 10 gallons) of water using a strap that is placed around their forehead, thus carrying the jug on their backs. Despite what, in my Western eyes, may be considered poor conditions, the family seems to do quite well for themselves.

She grabs a teapot and strainer from the free-standing cupboard with mismatched doors and pours the chai, in a not-so-careful manner, from the pot through the strainer into the teapot. As she calls telling the others to come because the afternoon chai is ready, she tosses the dirty silverware and some small dishes from lunch into the soon-to-be dishwater warming on the fire.

*Name changed for privacy

Nicole Rademacher is a currently in Kenya until the beginning of May doing research and documentation for her current project investigating domestic ritual (made possible by the North Carolina Arts Council, USA and many private donars/patrons).

official website • follow her project on Facebook

On the way

It seems that every school child knows how to say "How are you?" It is a chant they do. A mzungu (white person, literally translated to "wanderer") is on the street and all the school children immediately begin the chant "ouryou?" and repeat. 

Yes, endearing at first, and perhaps I even responded, fine and you? when I first arrived. But now, I dismiss them, knowing that it is a rote response. But there are those children that actually engage - or attempt to - in conversation; the ones that smile coily, that are actually curious and looking for some type of interaction. I smile back at them, wave, sometimes shake their hands.

Often the school children follow you, especially in less populated areas. Are they protecting you? Probably just interested in the wanderers. Makes me wonder how I must appear to them. The westerner I am, "diversity" is something that I don't really notice until it isn't there. Furthermore, I was always taught "not to stare" or to ignore those that were significantly "different". Here they stare, call out to you (yes, "OBAMA" has even been shouted to me, though I don't think it was because they suspected that I was American).

The most charming account of this that I can share was on the bus. As I was sitting in the aisle near the middle of the bus, I made a point to check out all of my fellow passengers going by. Almost immediately after a mother with a baby wrapped in a kanga and another daughter by hand passed by, I felt a tug at the back of my head. I looked behind me, but all I saw were backs. The ride was uneventful, but at Kenyatta Hospital (near the end of my trip and a very busy stop), I again watched the other passengers as they left. The mother passed by and at the same time I felt a tug. Promptly I turned to see the culprit: the oldest of the woman's two daughters, no more than 7 or 8. I smiled at her. She bashfully looked away, and scrambled to catch up with her mother and younger sister.